A blog article I wrote several years ago.
It was a good reminder to me of the joy of submitting to our good King.
Stop fighting!
Psalm 46, 1 Samuel 19
Tag: Jacob
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The One who’ll never abandon us
Look, I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go.
I will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. (Genesis 28:15)
Considering how badly Jacob had messed up, God’s promise to him was truly amazing.
But it did remind me that God says the same thing of us.
No matter how badly we may mess up, he never abandons us. He continues to be with us and watch over us.
His Spirit works in us daily to make us more like Jesus. And he will not leave us until he has done everything he has promised us, we are complete, and we see him face to face.
As Paul put it,
I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6)
I don’t know about you, but that gives me hope.
Let’s walk each day in that hope.
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Few and hard
Pharaoh said to Jacob, “How many years have you lived?”
Jacob said to Pharaoh, “My pilgrimage has lasted 130 years. My years have been few and hard, and they have not reached the years of my ancestors during their pilgrimages.” (Genesis 47:8-9)
As I read Jacob’s words, I thought about the psalm Moses wrote.
Perhaps as Moses wrote Psalm 90, he thought about Jacob.
Jacob had been through many hard times. Some of his problems he had brought upon himself, deceiving his father and his brother.
Later on, God would teach him the pain he had caused his father and brother when his own sons deceived him concerning Joseph.
In his life, short in comparison to Abraham’s (Genesis 25:7) and Isaac’s (35:28), Jacob had gone through many trials.
By the time of Moses, lifespans had shortened even further than Jacob’s. But I think Jacob would have agreed with Moses when he sang,
Our lives last seventy years
or, if we are strong, eighty years.Even the best of them are struggle and sorrow;
indeed, they pass quickly and we fly away. (Psalm 90:10)
And yet, by the end of his life, Jacob had seen God’s faithful love. (Psalm 90:14)
Though God had humbled him and Jacob had seen adversity, God also caused him to rejoice. (Psalm 90:15)
Jacob saw God’s work and power in his life. (Psalm 90:16)
And he saw God’s incredible grace toward him. (Psalm 90:17)
We too are on a journey. This world is not our home. This journey is short, and we often face sorrow and struggle.
But let us keep our eyes on God, remembering his faithful love and grace toward us.
And as we face each day, let us pray with Moses,
Teach us to number our days carefully
so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. (Psalm 90:12)
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God’s discipline
This is truly a fascinating chapter when you think about it.
For in it, you see Joseph being confronted with his past hurts.
He sees his “honest” brothers (verse 11) for the first time in 20 years. (“Honest? Did you tell Father the truth about me?”)
He is confronted with how they sold him into slavery. “One of our brothers is no longer living.” (Genesis 42:13)
Then you have his brothers. God confronts them with the guilt that they have tried to bury for years. “Obviously, we are being punished for what we did to our brother.” (21)
And finally Jacob. Ever since Joseph disappeared, his life has basically stopped because of his grief. And he is probably wondering where God is in all his pain.
“Joseph is gone, and Simeon is gone. Now you want to take Benjamin. Everything happens to me!” (36)
Often times we confront pain in our lives.
Sometimes it’s things people have done to us.
Sometimes it’s the consequences of our own guilt.
And so we wonder, “Does God really hate me that much?”
And yet, God does not confront us with our pain to make us suffer. He does it to bring about our healing and salvation.
For Joseph, he finds out for the first time that Reuben was not involved in selling him. That he in fact had defended Joseph.
More, Joseph finds out his brothers were not as callous as he had thought. That all these years they had been wracked with guilt for what they had done to him. (21-22)
All that, I think, helped him to forgive.
For his brothers, they thought they were seeing God’s judgment. (21, 28)
In reality, they were seeing his salvation.
And for Jacob, though God had been silent during those 20 years of pain without Joseph, he would soon find out that God had been working for his good all along.
So let us remember the words of exhortation from the author of Hebrews:
“…we had human fathers discipline us, and we respected them.
Shouldn’t we submit even more to the Father of spirits and live?
For they disciplined us for a short time based on what seemed good to them, but he does it for our benefit, so that we can share his holiness.
No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
Therefore, strengthen your tired hands and weakened knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed instead.” (Hebrews 12:9-13)
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Seeing the face of God
[Jacob] himself went on ahead and bowed to the ground seven times until he approached his brother.
But Esau ran to meet him, hugged him, threw his arms around him, and kissed him. Then they wept…
Jacob said… “I have seen your face, and it is like seeing God’s face, since you have accepted me.” (Genesis 33:3-4, 10)
Sometimes we wonder how God sees us.
Like Jacob sinned against Esau, we have sinned against God. And we wonder how in the world he could ever accept us.
The amazing thing is, though we may come head down, fearful, and awaiting punishment, God comes running to us like Esau, hugs us, throws his arms around us, and kisses us. In short, he accepts us.
In a lot of ways, Esau’s response to Jacob mirrors the father’s response in a famous parable Jesus told.
But while the son was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)
That’s what we see when we see our heavenly Father’s face:
Compassion.
Forgiveness.
Acceptance.
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God fights
Your name will no longer be Jacob,” he said.
“It will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:28)
When blessing Jacob, God gave him a new name: Israel.
The name “Israel” can mean either “He struggles with God” or “God fights.”
I could always understand the first meaning. All his life, Jacob had struggled with God trying to gain his blessing and favor.
Instead of waiting for God’s timing, he stole Esau’s birthright and blessing.
Instead of trusting God and simply telling Laban he was leaving, he ran away secretly with his family.
But today, I finally came to understand the second meaning of that name.
The thing that Jacob had to learn was he didn’t have to fight to obtain God’s blessing and favor.
God was already on his side. God was fighting for him.
God was fighting for Jacob in his struggles with Laban (Genesis 31:6-13, 24, 42).
And God would fight for him in reconciling him with Esau. (Genesis 33)
So many times, we feel like we have to struggle to gain God’s favor and blessing. But in doing so, we end up fighting God and others.
Sometimes, just like Jacob was trying to buy Esau’s favor and forgiveness, we try to do the same with God.
But God tells us, “I am already on your side. I am already fighting for you.”
And Jesus showed us that most vividly on the cross. (Colossians 2:13-15)
So remember the words of Paul.
What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything?
Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies.
Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.
Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? …
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-35, 37-39)
A stairway was set on the ground with its top reaching the sky, and God’s angels were going up and down on it. The Lord was standing there beside him, saying, “I am the Lord”…
[Jacob] said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”
He was afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven.” (12-13, 16-17)
Think about this scene. Jacob, because of his sin, was on the run from his brother Esau.
And yet God reached down in his grace and revealed himself to him. Not only did he reveal himself to Jacob, he blessed him.
Around 2000 years after this event, another man named Nathanael stood in front of Jesus.
I believe that like Jacob, he was somewhat afraid because Jesus had revealed things about Nathanael that only God could have known.
Nathanael named him Messiah that day. But he didn’t yet realize that Jesus was much more.
Jesus told him,
You will see greater things than this…
Truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.(John 1:50-51)
In the story of Jacob, the angels descended from heaven on the stairway. Here in John, Jesus says, “I am the stairway. But I am not telling you to come up to me. I have come down to you.”
More than that, Jesus is the new house of God, the new temple where God’s glory is revealed, and people can draw close to him because of his death on the cross (John 2:20, 12:32).
And now, he is the gate to heaven. If anyone enters by him, he will be saved. (John 10:9)
That’s the meaning of Christmas. Jesus is our stairway, our temple, our gate, and most importantly, our Lord and God.
And whether we know it or not, he is in this place.
He is Immanuel, God with us.
So together with Jacob and Nathanael, let us stand in awe in his presence.
…stay in this land as an alien, and I will be with you and bless you… I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you. I will bless you. (26:3, 24)
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob didn’t belong to this world. They belonged to God and his kingdom. But for a while, they were called to live on this earth as aliens, as temporary residents. (Hebrews 11:13-16)
They weren’t to live like the people around them, taking on their values or way of life. They were to be different from the people of this world.
And God promised them that though they would be living like aliens in a foreign land, he would be with them and bless them.
As long as they remembered that, they did well. When they forgot, they got into trouble.
When Abraham and Isaac forgot, out of fear of their neighbors, they claimed their wives were their sisters.
In Jacob’s case, perhaps he wasn’t sure those promises were really for him, so he resorted to deceit in order to gain God’s blessing.
Like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we are like foreigners in a strange land. (1 Peter 2:11, John 17:14-16)
The question is, do we truly believe that God is with us and will bless us? And does that truth shape the way we live?
Take some time to mediate on these words of Paul. Think about what they really mean.
On the contrary, we speak God’s hidden wisdom in a mystery, a wisdom God predestined before the ages for our glory…as it is written,
What no eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no human heart has conceived—
God has prepared these things for those who love him. (I Corinthians 2:7, 9)
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God’s love and faithfulness
I’ve been preparing a message on the latter part of Jacob’s life this past week. Jacob went through a tough time. He lost his wife. He lost his father. And he lost his beloved son Joseph for 20 years.
Perhaps, he could have said at that time very cynically,
Our God is in heaven
and does whatever he pleases. (Psalm 115:3)
But at the end of his life, he realized, “God is not capricious. Everything he does has a purpose. And he is good.”
This song was written long after he died, but I could imagine singing to himself,
Israel, trust in the Lord!
He is their help and shield. (9)
For a long time, Jacob probably thought he had been forgotten. But at the end of his life he could sing,
The Lord remembers us and will bless us.
He will bless the house of Israel…
he will bless those who fear the Lord—
small and great alike. (12-13)
So if you’re going through a tough time, if you’re feeling abandoned, remember Jacob’s story. And with hearts filled with faith, let us sing,
Not to us, Lord, not to us,
but to your name give glory
because of your faithful love, because of your truth. (1)
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The grace of God
I was just reading this passage this morning, and these were the thoughts that came to mind as I did so.
I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant…You have said, ‘I will cause you to prosper. (32:10-12)
Jacob said this as an heir of God’s promise to Abraham. But how much more can we say this of ourselves as Abraham’s spiritual heirs by faith?
None of us are worthy of God’s kindness and faithfulness to us. And yet by his grace God is determined to do good to us. (Romans 8:28-32)
For he thought, “I want to appease Esau with the gift that is going ahead of me. After that, I can face him, and perhaps he will forgive me.” (32:20)
Despite God’s grace, how often do we think of God as Jacob thought of Esau? How often do we feel we need to do something to appease him?
And even after attempting to do so, we still harbor some doubt on whether he will forgive us?
As with Esau, however, God needs no appeasing. Because of Jesus’ work on the cross, he is already appeased. And he already thinks favorably toward us.
But Jacob said, “No, please! If I have found favor with you, take this gift from me. For indeed, I have seen your face, and it is like seeing God’s face, since you have accepted me.
Please take my present that was brought to you, because God has been gracious to me and I have everything I need.” So Jacob urged him until he accepted. (33:10-11)
At this point, Jacob realized that Esau had already forgiven him. And so now his attempt at a bribe turns into a gift arising from a grateful heart.
And so with us.
All we give to God is no longer to win his favor but comes from a heart of gratitude for his grace and the fact that in Jesus, we have everything we need.
Each day, let us rest in this incredible, indescribable grace of God. And worship.
At our church, we are going through a series on God as our shepherd. I suppose you saw a glimpse of that in yesterday’s blog.
Today, I’m meditating on Genesis 48:15. These were Jacob’s words to Joseph at the end of his life:
The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked,
the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day…
Think about those words a bit.
I’m kind of guessing that Jacob saw Abraham and Isaac as “good sheep,” although both of them had their moments as black sheep. But in Jacob’s eyes, they “walked with God.”
How did Jacob see himself? I think he kind of saw himself as a black sheep for the first half of his life.
Although he had been raised by a God-fearing father in Isaac, Jacob had definitely had problems calling God, “My God.” (Genesis 28:20-22)
It took many years before he could say, “God, you are my God.” (Genesis 32:28, Genesis 33:20 footnote)
Put another way, for the first half of his life, Jacob had been a lost sheep who had wandered far from God.
And yet, Jacob in looking back at his life could say, “God has been my shepherd all my life.”
In other words, “I may have been a lost sheep. I may have wandered from him. I may not have always acknowledged him as my shepherd.
“But even so, God was my shepherd from the time I was born all the way until now.
When I was lost and hurting and scared, he sought hard after me.
“When I went through trials, some of my own making, and some not, he led me out of the darkest valleys.
“Through everything I have ever gone through, I have never been out of his care.”
My life has not been nearly as dramatic as Jacob’s. I never had a real rebellious stage, growing up in a Christian family.
But I can see all the ways he has been my shepherd from the time I was born until now.
He put me in a family that was seeking after God.
He called my name when I was 7 or 8 and I became a Christian.
At a time when I wasn’t particularly faithful to him, he remained faithful to me and truly revealed himself to me.
He then brought me into children’s ministry. And then into ministry with my peers.
When I was fighting hard to avoid coming here to Japan as a missionary, he gently directed my stubborn heart and brought me into far greener pastures here in Japan than I’d ever had in Hawaii.
At a time when I was seeking a wife, he brought me one.
After some terrible struggles, God gave us a beautiful daughter.
And to this day, I see all my stubbornness (and can I say outright disobedience at times?) and yet he never lost patience with me. He kept on leading me.
Looking back, his grace towards me has been amazing.
And so I say with Jacob in amazement and wonder, “God has been my shepherd all my life.”
Not because I’m such a good sheep. But because he is such a good shepherd. And by his grace, he chose to call me his own.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.–John Newton
One of the more interesting scenes in Genesis is aged Jacob, standing before Pharaoh, the most powerful man in a powerful nation.
What would you have done in that situation?
If you were standing before the president of the United States, surrounded by his secret service men, cameramen all around you, what would you say?
Here is Jacob, former deceiver and schemer, now worn by his years of trial and testing, once young and proud, now old and humbled.
And what does he do?
He blesses Pharaoh. Not once, but twice. (Genesis 47:7, 10)
I wonder how Pharaoh felt?
Did he look down on Jacob, wondering what this mere shepherd was doing trying to bless him, the most powerful man in the nation?
Or did he feel the weight of the blessing? That here, in Jacob, was a man who had touched the living God. And now, Pharaoh was getting a taste of the living God right there in his own palace.
I don’t know how he felt.
But as I’ve mentioned before, we should be blessing the people around us. When they see us, they should see Christ in us. When we touch their lives, they should feel Christ himself touching their lives.
But though we need to be touching the world around us, we also need to keep our distance from it.
In other words, while we need to influence our world for Christ, we need to keep ourselves from being influenced by it.
Joseph certainly seemed to have that in mind when his family moved to Egypt.
Joseph knew that the Egyptians didn’t worship God, even with all the influence he had there.
And he knew that it would be very easy for Egypt to influence his family, just as they had been influenced before Abraham was called out from his home country to come to Canaan.
So he told his brothers and father, “Tell them you’re shepherds. Egyptians kind of look down on shepherds, so by telling them that, they’ll keep you at a distance and you can keep yourselves separate from them.”
Being separate from the world and yet touching it is a delicate balance sometimes.
If we pull ourselves out and only spend time with Christians, we will have no influence on the non-Christians around us.
If on the other hand, we spend all our time with non-Christians, we risk being influenced by their values and way of thinking. Neither extreme is good.
For me personally, when I get out of balance, it tends to be the former, because it’s so comfortable to be with people who have the same values as I do. Who think the same way I do.
But God has called us to be a blessing to others, and I can’t do that if I don’t associate with the non-Christians around me.
How about you? Are you balanced? Or out of balance?
Are you so connected with your Christian friends, that you’re not touching the world?
Or are you so connected with your non-Christian friends that they’re starting to influence you?
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God’s silence through our suffering
There are many stories of God’s people suffering throughout the Bible. I don’t know that any of them suffered any more than Jacob.
Oh sure, Job’s suffering was far more intense. But it was over a far shorter period of time (at least that’s always been my impression, anyway — feel free to correct me if I’m wrong).
Prophets were persecuted; many were even killed for proclaiming God’s word. But at least God was speaking to them. Jacob on the other hand…
This passage in Genesis 46 strikes me for one major reason. It was great that God told Jacob, “Go down to Egypt. I’ll be with you. And Joseph himself will close your eyes.”
But where was God the previous 20 years or so? Where were his words of comfort that Joseph was still alive during those 20 years?
After Joseph was sold into slavery, 13 years passed before he became an official of Egypt.
Seven more years passed where there was an abundance of food in Egypt.
It was only after that, during the famine, that Jacob would find out his son was still alive, give or take a few years. Why didn’t God say anything?
When Jacob was deceived by his sons into thinking Joseph was dead, the Bible says he mourned many days and would not be comforted. He said,
In mourning will I go down to the grave to my son. (Genesis 37:35)
The years didn’t dull his pain either. Twenty years later, he was still making decisions based on the death of Joseph.
He refused to send Benjamin (the only other son he had by his beloved wife Rachel) with his brothers to Egypt on their first trip because he feared something might happen to him.
And when the brothers said that the lord of the land had commanded that they bring back Benjamin to prove they were not spies, Jacob refused to let him go. He said,
My son will not go down there with you; his brother is dead and he is the only one left.
If harm comes to him on the journey you are taking, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in sorrow (Genesis 42:38).
It was only when things got desperate, that he finally relented, saying,
If I am bereaved, I’m bereaved. (Genesis 43:14).
Yet throughout this whole time of suffering, God said…nothing.
There are times when we go through suffering, and yet despite it all, God seems near.
We sense his presence. We sense his comfort. And we still sense his voice in our lives. And because of that, even though we’re struggling, our trials are a little easier to bear.
But there are times when God is silent. When our prayers just seem to bounce back off the ceiling. When there are no answers to our questions. And when God seems a mile away.
Jacob went through that for 20 years.
And yet sight unseen, God was working. God had a plan to save Jacob and his family that Jacob could not see.
It wasn’t that God didn’t care through this time of silence. He was working in Jacob’s family throughout each of those 20 years.
He was working in Joseph.
He was working in the hearts of Joseph’s brothers.
And yes, he was working even in Jacob. Jacob just couldn’t see it.
But when he did, all the years of sorrow fell off like a weight. And joy was restored once again.
Maybe you’re going through a hard time right now. And God seems distant. It seems like he doesn’t care. It seems as though he’s abandoned you.
God didn’t abandon Jacob in those 20 years. He hasn’t abandoned you. He’s still working. He’s still listening to your cries. And he still has a plan for your life. So hang on to him.
It may be one month, it might be one year, it might be 20 years. It might even be…tomorrow. But you will see God’s work in your life once again.
So hold on. Don’t give up.
As the apostle Paul once wrote,
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:3-5)
When my wife got pregnant, we were debating what to call our new child. We threw around a lot of names.
I was kind of thinking of Emily, but that kind of got tossed to the side when my cousin stole that name for her own daughter who was born several weeks before. (If you’re reading this Susan, I’m only joking). 🙂
Anyway, we settled on Yumi, which means “bearing fruit.”
It comes from Galatians 5:22-23 which talks about the fruit of the Spirit, with our hope being that she would bear that kind of fruit in her life.
Names can be significant. They often reflect the hopes and dreams a parent has for their child. But sometimes they can have negative connotations too.
That was the case for Jacob, and also his son Benjamin. Jacob’s name meant “Heel grasper” because when he and his twin brother Esau was born, he was holding on to Esau’s heel, trying to get a free ride out of his mother’s womb.
But Jacob’s name also had the connotation of “deceiver.” And it reflected much of how Jacob’s life would turn out.
Benjamin was Jacob’s last son, and the younger of Rachel’s two sons.
But she had a difficult childbirth, and minutes after her son was born, with her dying breath, she named him Ben-Oni, which meant “Son of my trouble.”
In both cases, Jacob’s and Ben-Oni’s names were changed. Jacob changed Ben-Oni’s name to “Benjamin” which meant “Son of my right hand.”
Jacob refused to see Benjamin as the “son of my trouble,” even though his birth cost the life of Jacob’s beloved wife.
Instead, he saw his son as one who would always have a place of honor in the family. (To sit at a person’s right hand was considered to be in a place of honor).
God, on the other hand, changed Jacob’s name from “deceiver” to Israel.
There are two actual meanings here. One is “He struggles with God.” And that is the meaning God assigns to it when he talked to Jacob in chapter 32.
But here in chapter 35, it’s very possible that God’s assigning another meaning to the name. Israel can also mean, “Prince with God.”
And it seems that this is the meaning God assigns here, as God blesses Israel and says,
From you, a nation and community of nations will come, and kings will be among your descendants. (Genesis 35:11)
This would also explain why God renames Jacob “Israel” twice.
So what does this mean for us? It means we that when we become Christians, we are no longer tied to our past, and more specifically, the mistakes of our past.
We may have completely messed up our lives, but God doesn’t look to our past anymore. Instead, he only looks to our future and to what we can be.
And we are no longer bound by the way anyone, even our own parents feel, or have felt about us in the past.
Some of us may have been named “stupid” or “worthless” by our parents or by the people around us.
Some of us may have been named “a disappointment.”
But when God looks at us, he says, “You are precious and honored in my sight.” (Isaiah 43:4).
He loved us so much, that he sent his own Son as an exchange for us, that is, he sent Jesus to die on a cross to take the punishment for our sin.
So whatever your name may be, whatever names you have been given, whether you like your name or not, remember that God has a new name for you.
A name that is no longer tied to your past, nor to the way people have looked at you in the past.
He gives us a name that reflects the way he sees you and the future he has envisioned for you. As Jesus says in Revelation:
To him who overcomes…I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it. (Revelation 2:17)
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The god of Me. The God of me.
Jacob had come a long way in his relationship with God during his journey from Canaan to Haran and back to Canaan again.
He started out having only heard stories about God from his grandfather and father, but never really having had his own personal experience with the living God.
Then he met God for the first time in Bethel but still didn’t really surrender himself to God completely.
The night he wrestled with God, he was still calling him, “The God of my father Abraham, the God of my father Isaac,” but did not really acknowledge him as his own God. (Genesis 32:9)
But now, after God had proven himself to Jacob, bringing him safely back to Canaan, Jacob built an altar to God, calling it, “El Elohe Israel,” which meant, “God, the God of Israel.”
It’s easy for me to forget at times that the nation of Israel still didn’t exist at that time, and that God had actually renamed Jacob, “Israel.”
So what Jacob was saying was not, “God, the God of the nation of Israel.” He was saying, “God, the God of me.”
For so long, Jacob had lived with the attitude of “the god of Me.”
He lived, not to serve God, but to serve himself. He didn’t trust God or wait on God’s timing for things. Instead, he tried to make things happen on his own no matter who he hurt.
But now, he was saying, “God, you are the God of me.” And his life was never the same.
This is not to say he would never fail again. Or struggle with doubt or fear.
But now, at last, God was on the throne of his heart, where he had belonged all along.
How about you? Are you living with the attitude of, “The god of Me?”
Are you still trying to live your own way? Are you still living a life, not trusting in God, but in yourself alone? Are you still living to please yourself, no matter who it hurts?
Or are you living with the attitude of, “God, you’re the God of me?”
As the old hymn says,
All to Jesus I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.All to Jesus I surrender;
Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;Let me feel the Holy Spirit,
Truly know that Thou art mine.All to Jesus I surrender;
Lord, I give myself to Thee;Fill me with Thy love and power;
Let Thy blessing fall on me.
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Wrestling with God
I admit it. I’m a pro wrestling fan. Yes, I know it’s not “real.” I know all the matches are predetermined. But it’s still kind of fun to watch.
Well, in this passage, we see the very first wrestling match. And while it was real, the victor was predetermined. And in the end, Jacob finally had to say, “I yield.”
It occurs to me, though, that God could’ve made things a lot easier on Jacob. Think about it. From what we see of Esau in chapter 33, he had already forgiven Jacob. God had blessed Esau, and he no longer held any bitterness in his heart towards his brother.
God could’ve told Jacob, “Hey man. Don’t worry about it. It’s all cool. Esau isn’t coming to attack you. He’s just happy that he can see you again.”
But God didn’t do that. Instead, he let Jacob sweat. Here Jacob is before God, totally panicking, and praying desperately.
“God help! My brother’s coming to kill me! What am I going to do? Didn’t you tell me to go back home? Didn’t you say you were going to bless me? Now look what’s happening! I’m a dead man!”
Why did God let Jacob go through all those feelings of fear and panic? I don’t know, but I would guess that he wanted Jacob to finally learn what it meant to yield to him and depend on him.
All his life, Jacob had tried to do things his own way. All his life, Jacob had tried to make things happen by his own strength and his own efforts.
But now Jacob was at the end of his rope. There was nothing he could do. There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
He was completely at the mercy of his brother, because there were just too many people and things with Jacob for him to get away from Esau.
So he sends his family away from him, and now he’s all alone, probably praying for all he’s worth.
For all he knows, it’s the last day he’ll ever live, because he knows that Esau will definitely overtake them by the next day.
And suddenly in the dead of night, Jacob gets attacked and he starts wrestling with this unknown stranger.
I’ve always kind of thought it was a silent struggle, with neither saying a word as they fought.
But as I think about it, it seems very likely that they carried on at least some dialogue during the fight.
Jacob was probably shouting out, “Why are you doing this? Who are you? Why are you attacking me?”
I wonder if the man said anything to Jacob during the struggle?
I wonder if while they were wrestling, he said to Jacob, “Why do you struggle so much? Just yield!”
“No! I’ll never yield.”
“Yield!”
“No!”
Finally daybreak comes, and when the man sees that Jacob is still struggling, still not yielding, he ends the fight by forcing Jacob’s hip out of joint.
And the man says, “Let me go. This fight is over.”
And Jacob cries out, “No. I won’t let you go.”
But by this time, Jacob is a beaten man. He knows now that there can be no more wrestling. No more struggling. No more fighting. All he can do is yield, and beg for mercy.
And so he’s no longer trying to fight. Instead, he’s simply clinging to the man, tears in his eyes, as he cries out, “I won’t let you go. I need your blessing!”
The man replied, “What’s your name?”
“My name is Jacob. It means ‘Deceiver.'”
“No longer will you be called ‘Deceiver.’ All your life, you’ve tried to con your way through life. Deceiving your brother. Deceiving your father. Deceiving your uncle.
But now you will be called, “He who wrestles with God.” Because by wrestling with God, you’ve found the key to overcoming the problems in your life. It’s not by deceiving others. It’s not by trying to make things happen by your own efforts. It’s by yielding…to me.”
At this point, Jacob is really afraid, wondering who he’s really talking to, and he says, “Who are you? What’s your name?”
The nameless man replies, “Why do you need to know my name?” And then he blessed Jacob.
And Jacob suddenly realized who he was talking to. It was God himself.
Many people believe that it was actually Jesus that Jacob had wrestled that night.
Jacob called that place Peniel, which means “face of God,” because,
I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared. (Genesis 32:30)
And Jacob limped away from that place a broken, but blessed man.
How about you? Are you wrestling with God right now? Are you constantly struggling in life because you’re insisting on doing things your own way instead of God’s way?
The only way to overcome in life is not to fight God, not to wrestle with him, but to yield to him. To cling to him. And to realize that true blessing comes only from him.
Will you wrestle with God?
Or will you yield to him?
Categories
How to wreck your relationships
Several months ago, I watched an old “Alfred Hitchcock Hour” show called “How to get rid of your wife.” It was a black comedy about the lengths one man went through to get rid of his wife.
Essentially, he convinced her that he was trying to kill her, and in so doing, got her to try to kill him. She was then arrested and thrown into prison, and he went scot free. Kind of. You have to see the episode to find the twist at the end.
Anyway, it was basically a story of nasty people dealing with nasty people. The wife in the story wasn’t exactly a wonderful person either.
The episode came to mind as I read the last part of the story concerning Jacob and Laban. Moses could’ve titled this story, “How to get rid of your son-in-law. (And your daughters too).”
Laban may not have been trying consciously to get rid of Jacob, but it sure is hard to believe he couldn’t see the potential consequences of what he was doing.
I’m just amazed at all the things Laban did to Jacob. First he deceives Jacob into marrying Leah. Then he makes Jacob work another 7 years to get Rachel.
Then he makes an agreement where Jacob would take care of all of Laban’s sheep and goats, with all the spotted and striped ones becoming Jacob’s.
But no sooner do they make the agreement, than Laban takes all the spotted and striped animals from the flock and puts those animals in the care of his other sons, leaving only the white ones with Jacob.
He of course thought that by doing so, there was little chance that there would be many striped or spotted animals being born for Jacob’s flock.
When that didn’t work, Laban unilaterally changed the terms of the agreement 10 times.
What in the world was Laban thinking?
When Jacob confronts him with all this, Laban doesn’t even apologize. He just says, “Well, they were all my daughters and flocks to begin with.”
One wonders if Laban really couldn’t see how his attitude had not only wrecked his relationship with Jacob, but with his own daughters as well.
Leah and Rachel saw how Laban had treated them, and they felt like they had just been sold off like slaves or farm animals simply for the money.
(Although Rachel at least had the comfort of knowing that Jacob loved her. Leah didn’t even have that much).
So how can we wreck our relationships? I’ll put this in the context of marriage, but you can apply this in just about any relationship.
1. Dishonesty.
Trust is essential to any relationship, and when you are dishonest in your dealings with people, it’s a good way to destroy your relationships.
In the Hitchcock film, it started with the husband complaining that his wife had deceived him into thinking she was a completely different kind of person while they were dating.
It was only when they got married, that his wife showed her true colors.
How often do people do that when they’re dating others? They pretend to be someone they’re not, and in so doing, lay a foundation for their relationship that cannot stand the test of time.
2. Having no respect for others’ feelings.
Or at the very least, being completely oblivious to them.
When your husband or wife says you’re doing something that upsets them, do you just say, “You’re too sensitive.”
Or do you really consider their feelings, and try to place them above your own?
It’s all well and good to tell someone, “I want you to be honest with me.”
But when they are honest about how your actions or words make them feel, do you make the effort to change, or do you just think they’re being too petty?
3. Selfishness and pride.
I have no idea whether Laban was merely so selfish that he couldn’t see his actions were wrong, or whether he was too proud to apologize.
Either way, he was wrong. And whether you struggle with pride or selfishness, either can effectively destroy a relationship.
When we become so selfish that we can’t even realize it, we start to demean people, and it allows us to justify just about any action that we do, no matter how wrong it is.
And when we become so proud that we can’t admit when we’re wrong, it puts a wall in our relationships that will only grow with time. How many marriages have you known that were torn apart by selfishness and pride.
How are your relationships? Would someone be able to write a script about your life called, “How to get rid of your wife/husband/best friend?”
If you truly care about the people in your life, take a look at yourself, and start rooting out anything that would tear those relationships apart.
Categories
Using people? Loving people?
This is by far one of the more bizarre stories in the Bible. And sad. Jacob falls in love with Rachel, and her father Laban says, “If you work for me for 7 years, I’ll let you have her.”
That’s not really the bizarre part. Jacob had nothing, and it was a custom in those days to pay a dowry to a bride’s father.
But then the bizarreness begins. Jacob works the 7 years, and he takes his newly-wed, but veiled wife into his darkened tent, and when he wakes up the next morning, he finds out that it isn’t Rachel; it’s Rachel’s sister Leah.
Laban tells Jacob, “Well, it’s our custom to let the older sister get married first, but if you work 7 more years, I’ll let you have Rachel too.” Jacob agrees and then marries Rachel.
But for obvious reasons, Jacob didn’t really love Leah, and the Lord saw that. And so he allowed her to get pregnant, and she had three sons. Leah’s words at their births are very poignant.
She named her first son Reuben which meant, “He’s seen my misery.” And she said, “The Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.”
She named her next son Simeon which meant, “Heard.” And she said, “The Lord has heard I’m not loved, and so he gave me another son.”
The third son she named Levi which meant “Attached.” And she said, “Now at last my husband will become attached to me because I’ve born him three sons.”
Rachel then got really upset because she had no children, so she gave her maidservant to Jacob to be another wife and to have children for her.
Then Leah got jealous when she was no longer having children, so she gave her maidservant to Jacob to be yet another wife and have children for her. And this situation went on and on and on.
Why did all this happen? Because Laban forgot one key thing. People are to be loved, not used.
He used Jacob in order to both marry off his older daughter and to gain a profit from Jacob’s work. He didn’t care that Jacob was a man with feelings. And he didn’t care about the consequences to his own daughters.
You can see throughout these passages that he passed this way of thinking on to both his daughters who started seeing both Jacob and their own maidservants as tools in their own battle with one another.
Jacob wasn’t a whole lot better. As the Bible says in Proverbs,
Under [this] the earth trembles…[and] cannot bear up…an unloved woman who is married. (Proverbs 30:21,23)
How do we see the people in our lives? Do we see them as people that God loves and we should love? Or do we simply see them as tools to get what we want?
So much pain comes into the world when people become tools instead of someone to love.
You see this in relationships sometimes with men claiming to love a woman simply in order to sleep with her.
You see this in marriage sometimes with people getting married simply because their partner happens to be rich.
You see this in the workplace sometimes with people using others as something to step on in order to advance in their career.
But when we see people that way, we not only degrade them, we degrade ourselves.
We were made to love and to be loved. And by using people instead of loving them, we make ourselves something less than what God intended.
And that leads to misery, not only for the people we used, but for ourselves as well.
There’s an old song I love. It says:
Using things and loving people
That’s the way it’s got to beUsing things and loving people
Look around and you can see
That loving things and using people
Only leads to miseryUsing things and loving people
That’s the way it’s got to beUsing things and loving people
Brings you happiness I’ve foundUsing things and loving people
Not the other way around‘Cause loving things and using people
Only leads to miseryUsing things and loving people
That’s the way it’s got to be
For you and me
Categories
Encountering God
I grew up in a Christian home, so I’ve gone to church all my life. I became a Christian at the age of 7 or so, but while I grew in head knowledge, I never really grew as a Christian.
By the time I was in junior high school, I really didn’t want to go to church. Oh, I suppose I enjoyed being with my friends at church, but there were other things I preferred doing.
Then our family changed churches, and I really started disliking church. It was so different from my old church. The worship time seemed to drag on forever, and the people were very different from me.
But everything changed in a moment. I started going to a Bible study when I was in ninth grade, and usually, we would start with a few songs, and then go into the Bible teaching.
But that night, it was different.
I don’t know to this day whether it was planned or not, but we started the singing, and we just never stopped.
And it was on that night, that I really sensed the presence of God in a room for the first time. He felt so close, I almost felt like I could touch him.
I’d been a Christian for 7 years at that point, but it was the first time I realized, “Hey, God is really here! He’s not just out there somewhere. He is really here!” That realization changed my life forever.
I imagine Jacob had those very same feelings that night at Bethel.
For a long time, he’d heard about God from his grandfather Abraham and his father Isaac. He probably even believed in God. But he had never really encountered God in his life.
And then one night, he goes to sleep and he has a dream of angels going up and down a stairway to heaven.
More than that, he hears the voice of God speaking to him, giving him all the promises that had been given to Abraham and Isaac.
And suddenly, God wasn’t a God far away. God was a God who was near. And Jacob said,
Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it. (16)
God, of course, had been there all along, but Jacob never noticed. He had been too busy trying to make things happen in his life. And in the process, he totally messed up his life.
Now he was on the run, in fear of his brother, wondering what what was going to happen to him, and in the midst of it all, God breaks through, and says, “Hey Jacob! I’m here. I’m with you.”
How about you? Have you had your encounter with God? Or is he just someone way out there somewhere? Do you sense his presence in your life? Is he real to you? Or is he just a story in a book?
Have you had your encounter with God, only to lose sight of him?
Maybe before, God felt so close that you could touch him. But now, you’ve come down from the mountaintop and find yourself entangled with the pressures of “real life.” And God doesn’t seem so near anymore.
God’s calling out to us as he did with Jacob.
“I’m here. I’m with you. And I will not leave you until I’ve done for you all that I’ve promised. And even beyond.”
Categories
Do the ends really justify the means?
There are a lot of questions I’d love to ask God about this passage.
First, how much did Isaac really know?
When God told Rebekah that Esau was to serve Jacob, did she pass that on to Isaac? And if she did, how did Isaac respond?
Further, when Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, did Isaac hear about it, and what was his response?
Either Isaac knew nothing, and was just doing what he thought was right, or he knew everything, and there was something wrong about his attitude. But as it is, we don’t know how much Isaac really knew.
Which brings us to Rebekah’s and Jacob’s actions.
I’m sure Rebekah told Jacob of what God has said. The Bible doesn’t say this, but from Jacob’s actions earlier, taking Esau’s birthright, it seems that he had this idea planted from somewhere.
It could’ve come from himself, I suppose. But it seems more likely that it came from his mother. So in all probability, they both knew God’s promises.
But when Isaac was about to bless Esau instead, they both panicked. And so they deceived Isaac into blessing Jacob instead.
Rebekah and Jacob succeeded. They got the blessing from Isaac. And it was God’s will to bless Jacob, not Esau. But did the ends justify the means?
Well, look at the result. Esau was so upset, he planned to murder Jacob. Because of that Jacob had to flee for his life, and he never did see his mother again.
For a long time he had to live in fear of his life, and it was only many years later that he reconciled his relationship with Esau.
Lots of fear, lots of worry, lots of wasted years because of this one decision.
Which brings me to my last question. Had Jacob and Rebekah done nothing, what would have happened? Would God have intervened at the last minute and said to Isaac, “Jacob is the one you should bless?”
We don’t know. And we’ll never know because Jacob and Rebekah took things into their own hands.
One thing I do know is that God always keeps his promises. And he didn’t need Jacob and Rebekah’s help.
There may be times in our lives, when it seems we need to do something a little shady to get things done.
There may be times in our lives when we say, “But there was no other choice. I had to do things this way.”
But when we try to force things apart from God’s will, we get into trouble.
Abraham and Sarah learned this with the birth of Ishamel.
And Jacob and Rebekah learned this with the incident of Isaac’s blessing.
How much regret have we had in our lives because we tried to force things to happen, instead of waiting for God to act.
As Proverbs 14:12 says,
There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
And again, in Proverbs 3:5-6,
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Categories
Nearsighted
I remember being a kid and seeing everyone in my family wearing glasses. It made me kind of jealous, believe it or not, and I wanted glasses too, so I didn’t really take care of my eyes.
I needed glasses by the time I was in second grade, I think. Many glasses and contact lenses later, I really wish I had taken better care of my eyes.
Esau was definitely nearsighted when it came to his future. As the firstborn son, he was entitled to many privileges as such, including a double-portion of the family inheritance, leadership over the family once Isaac died, and the blessings God had promised Abraham and Isaac.
But Esau despised these things. He considered them of very little worth compared to the needs of the here and now. And so in a split second, for a simple bowl of stew, he gave it all away.
It’s easy to criticize Esau, but how often do we despise the inheritance we have in Christ?
How often do we treat it as of little value, compared to our needs and wants of the here and now. We spend so much time pursuing our career, pursuing money, and pursuing things, that we forget the things that are truly important.
Ultimately, there are only two things on this earth we can take with us into heaven. Our relationship with God and our relationships with others who know Him.
These are the things that are eternal, and they make up a large part of our inheritance in heaven. Everything else in this world will just turn to dust and pass away.
So why focus so much on what is temporal?
As the apostle John wrote,
Do not love the world or anything in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.
The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-16)
Moment to Moment (Bible blog) 